"Drugs, what a devil-inspired poison," street preacher David Wilkerson wrote in the 1962 book "The Cross and the Switchblade." "It's death on the installment plan."
Anyone who knows an individual with a drug problem, or knows a family dealing with the situation, understands the author's words. Each installment payment - each time the drug is snorted, smoked or injected - has the potential to bring the user one step closer to death.
Nearly 50 years ago, when "The Cross and the Switchblade" passed for limited drug education for youth too late for Haight-Ashbury and Woodstock and too early for Studio 54, a drug addict might elicit a measure of sympathy. But the "dope pusher" was said to be the real villain, the one whose insidious distribution ring placed potential poison in the hands of a much larger group of people.
Today, police are still looking for the "pushers" and are attempting to make them pay dearly when their supply of a drug can be directly linked to the death of someone who took that drug.
Earlier this week, a woman was charged with second-degree murder in connection with the 2017 overdose death of a Hamilton County man who had a lethal amount of fentanyl in his system. When the findings in the case were presented to a Hamilton County grand jury late last month, it was the first such fentanyl-related overdose death brought before the panel.
"This indictment sends a strong message to drug dealers that they are going to be held accountable for their actions," a release from the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office said.
A year earlier, a similar incident occurred involving the heroin mixture overdose death of a man who had just graduated from Hamilton County Drug Court. Prosecutors said the individual who supplied the man with the heroin - through his runner to the driver of the car in which the man was a passenger - was arrested the following month and indicted on nine counts, including selling the batch of heroin that led to the man's death.
The individual dealer ultimately went on trial, accepted a 23-year sentence but then decided he no longer wanted to plead guilty. His case is still active.
Although the statute allowing the prosecution of drug suppliers has been on the books for years (and was amended as recently as 2006), said Melydia Clewell, a spokeswoman for the office of the Hamilton County district attorney general, "law enforcement tactics have changed to target dealers and/or suppliers, (particularly of heroin and anything else laced with fentanyl) due to the nationwide opioid crisis."
We believe people who use drugs have a certain responsibility for their own behavior, but we also know in most cases drug dealers care little or nothing about drug abusers but know fully well what they are doing is the equivalent of putting a loaded gun in the hand of the abuser with each deal.
That type of sociopathic conduct warrants the extra scrutiny it is getting from law enforcement.